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Game publishing behemoth Electronic Arts (EA) has acquired Chillingo, the popular game publisher that has come out with games such as the amazingly popular Angry Birds and Cut The Rope. The price? A very cool twenty million dollars, which is not really a bad deal considering that it paid $250 million for Playfish not too long ago. However, the deal will not let EA get its hands on Angry Birds. The uber-popular fowl flinging game may be distributed by Chillingo on the iPhone, but is developed by Roxio and those folks have held on to the game’s name, IP and rights. In fact, Angry Birds on Android was released by Roxio itself and not by Chillingo. EA still gets a fair bit by the deal, that said, with Chillingo’s leaderboards and achievements and of course, their Crsytal SDK platform. Now, who was it who said that all the money in gaming was in consoles?

The biggest mobile football game rivalry is expected to get a refresh this week, with Gameloft’s Real Football and EA’s FIFA series going toe to toe again. If rumours are to be believed, both Real Football 2011 and FIFA 11 are likely to hit the App store in the coming few days. We have heard no official confirmation but sources within both companies are reasonably sure that footy gaming fans will have reason to celebrate this week. Both games claim to offer radically better graphics and support for the retina display as well as official affiliations with different clubs and countries, letting you mess around with real players.

However, what we are really curious about is the gameplay – will the two games take a page out of Konami’s Pro Evo Soccer book and minimise the need to hit onscreen buttons? And erm…call us skinflints, but we are also wondering about the price tags and are offering prayers that they will be as far from the USD 10 mark as possible. We are waiting and watching!

One of the most popular office suites on the Apple App Store, Documents To Go has a new version. Documents To Go 4.0 arrived in the App Store today and will work on the iPhone/ iPod touch and iPad. And it brings a number of features that the developers at DataViz (the folks behind the suite) claim that users have been clamouring for, including “speed optimizations, Sheet To Go “freeze panes”, improved high resolution retina display” (yep, we are quoting the release there!). The new version also lets users take advantage of iOS’ multi-tasking feature (but what of the iPad, we wonder) and joy of joys, supports full external keyboard. The interface has been tweaked and made simpler and the already muscular Word to Go has had more formatting options added to it, such as left and right indent, strike out, and new bullet styles.

“Our loyal customer base has always been a huge resource for DataViz in terms of what features to add to our products and this version is no exception. Documents To Go 4.0 adds some of the top customer requests along with features that take advantage of the latest technology provided by Apple to offer an even more functional mobile office suite,” said Bonnie Boyle, Business Manager for Documents To Go products. The suite is available in two flavours – normal and Premium, with the former costing $9.99 and the latter being a tad pricier at $16.99. All customers who purchased Documents To Go 3.0 will however get a free upgrade to the new suite. We like that and are downloading! Watch this space for a review.

It was only a matter of time, we guess. Hot on the heels of the Farmville app on the iPhone comes its spoof, Farmvillain. Designed by Jolt Online Gaming, the app is a merciless spoof on the gathering and animal caring ways of Farmville with jokes and anecdotes that are so risque that the app was allegedly turned down three times by Apple (including once because it appeared “to include features that identify Chuck Norris”) before it finally made its way into the official download zone of iPhone/iPod touch users. The game costs $0.99 and as to what it contains, well, we will let the game description on iTunes do the talking:

“Sick of cutesie FamrVille posts on your Facebook page? Fight back with Farmvillain. Send hilarious dark and humorous posts to yourself and your friends’ walls. Want to give your friends some mad cow disease? Allow animal testing on your farm?…Farmvillain is most assuredly not a game, nor is it affiliated with any part of FarmVille. We’re much funnier than that.”

What can we say to that? We are downloading, folks. No offence meant to Mr Norris.

All right, in terms of gaming bonanzas, we do not think it gets any bigger than this. The legendary Sid “Civilization” Meier’s strategy game for the iPhone, Civilization Revolution, is available for free download “for a limited time” (we suspect it is just for a day but are praying like the deuce that it is longer). The game is considered by just about every hardcore strategy gamer as the best mobile game for those who love the gather-build-conquer model with lots of intricacies (hey, this is a Sid Meier game, after all) thrown in for good measure, not least the option of being able to lead any of 16 civilizations throughout history to lead to glory (or utter disaster, if you have a bad run, or heck, just want to.”

The original price of the game is $6.99, so we would urge all of you with gaming genes in your blood to go right ahead and download it while it is free. There is bad news for Indian gamers, though – the game ain’t available in the Indian App Store. Talk about getting the best things in life for free but being unable to download them. But ah…that is another story for another now. As of now, all those who can get Civilization Revolution, go right ahead. “Free”dom never tasted this good.

As the football World Cup goes into overdrive, app developers are getting really – and we mean REALLY- creative with their appy interpretations of the Beautiful Game, going well beyond routine footy kick me arounds and news updates. Two of the latest games that have descended on the App Store have got football themes with thorough twists. While Animal Soccer World: Jungle Cup Party sees elephants and lions literally having a ball in the jungle, courtesy a football that washed up on their shores, Pro Zombie Soccer (see the screenshot) lets gamers step into the shoes of a talented football player and take on an army of the undead by kicking – you guessed it – footballs at them. Both games come for $ 0.99 in the App Store.

Of course, followers of “pure football games” like the FIFA and Pro Evo series will scoff at such titles, but those users who want to get a flavour of football without getting too involved in the sport might just love them. Pro Zombie Soccer in particular struck us as being a whole lot of fun with its comic-based graphics, while Animal Soccer World seemed to be targeted more at the cutesy, kiddy crowd. What both titles prove is that when it comes to the App Store, there is clearly more to football than, well, football.

It continues to rain football games in the App Store. Just a day after Pro Evo Soccer made its debut on the iPhone, PikPok, the folks who have brought out Flick Kick Fielf Goal and Flick Kick Rugby, have released Flick Kick Football, a game revolving around free-kicks and dead ball situations in football. The purpose of the game is to score goals off free-kicks, using a flick of your finger to not just give power and direction to the football, but even curve it around walls. There is an arcade mode, a time attack mode and the option to share your scores online. All in a distinctly 1970s presentation style that will bring tears to the eyes of the sentimentally-inclined.

It is simple, incredibly addictive and well-worth the $0.99 being charged for it. We have been playing it for hours now and we still cannot get over how much fun it is to curve a ball around a wall, rather than just try to blast it over or around it as in other footy games. Worth a download for all those who just want the simple adrenaline rush of taking a shot at goal.